


A Bullet Dodged

by sadlikeknives



Category: Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-19 23:39:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13134594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: Leah reminisces on that time Bran Cornick proposed to her and she turned him down and started the Feminist Werewolf Revolution a century and a half ahead of schedule.





	A Bullet Dodged

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WintryGooseball](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WintryGooseball/gifts).



Dan came down the stairs into the den and announced unnecessarily that, "Charles is coming."

"Well, that's great," Leah said without looking up from her magazine, her tone saying what they all already knew: that was never great. All the dresses looked like sacks this season; she couldn't _wait_ for something she looked decent in to come back in fashion. "Did you tell him we already cleaned up the mess?" Their second, Alex, had gone unbalanced, and they'd been trying to wait it out, help him get his footing back, not wanting to declare him too far gone just yet—and then he'd snapped and mauled his wife. Elena had lived, not so far gone as to turn, and was still in the hospital. Alex had been quietly put down. Alex hadn't been out publicly, so they'd managed to pass it off as a wild dog attack, although Leah had overheard one of Elena's nurses say the wounds had to have been made by a truly gigantic dog. It could have been a lot worse, but it was still not a great moment for their pack.

"I talked to his father, actually," Dan said, sounding exactly as thrilled as anyone ever did about having to talk to Bran Cornick directly, especially when the conversation was to admit they'd fucked up—although at least Dan had sorted out his own mess. "Apparently Charles is already in transit."

"You should have let me talk to him," she said, and turned the page.

"I'm Alpha."

"Yeah," Jose said from the other couch. "But he's scared of Leah."

"He's not scared of me," Leah scoffed. "He's not scared of anything. He's the Marrok."

"He's ashamed of his conduct toward Leah," Jose amended, and Leah tilted her head in his direction to acknowledge that that was more accurate. "Even though that was over a hundred and fifty years ago."

"Well, his conduct was pretty spectacularly bad," Leah mutterd, and tilted her magazine toward Jane, Jose's mate, who was sharing the couch with her. "Do you think my hair would look good like that?"

"Don't change your hair," Jane said reflexively before actually looking at the page. When she did, she said, "I mean, yes, but when you cut your hair above the shoulders you always hate it within a week, so don't do it." Leah considered it, decided that based on past evidence Jane was probably right, and shrugged and moved on. "What—what did the Marrok do to you?"

"Oh, he asked me to marry him," Leah told her.

"And that was...bad?" Jane asked, confused.

Leah actually looked up from her magazine. "Have you not heard this story?" Jane wasn't that new to the pack; she'd been around long enough to have noticed the pattern of Leah's haircuts, and to have stopped dancing around with Jose and married him. It was a wonder that she hadn't heard this story, especially since Jose was, like Leah, old, and had been there when it happened.

"I didn't know you even knew the Marrok."

"I don't, not really. I don't know if anyone does. But we've met a few times. First time was when I was new—he and Samuel helped hunt down the mad wolf that'd turned me." The West had been wild in more ways than one, back then. "And he asked me to marry him. Obviously I said no. I thought maybe he was looking for a mother for Charles, except later I figured out he would've been already up about fifteen by then. Anyway, good times. Well, no, it was the worst month of my life, with the worst marriage proposal in the history of marriage proposals capping it off."

"Say what?" Jane asked, and then, "No, wait, go back, I want to see that nail polish." Leah obligingly turned the page back and held it so Jane could examine the spread.

"Apparently," Jose said with some relish, "Bran Cornick's idea of romance is to explain that he could never _possibly_ fall in love with our Leah here, and so that made her the perfect potential bride."

Jane looked up from the magazine, her eyes wide. " _What_?"

"That was what I said," Leah agreed. "Followed by, I think, 'Is this a joke?' and then, 'What's _wrong_ with you?' And, obviously, somewhere in there I got in a no." Possibly more like a 'hell no.'

"That doesn't even make sense!"

"I know," Leah agreed. "I don't even know what he was thinking. The next time I saw him, about thirty years later, he apologized and told me I was right to turn him down—like I needed to be told that. He claimed he'd had some sort of plan, but that he'd realized it was flawed."

Actually, she could remember exactly what he'd said, though she still didn't know what to make of it: "I have come to realize that my plan at that time was flawed at its foundations. I was unkind to you and asking you to agree to a greater unkindness, and I regret that." It had sounded rehearsed, and possibly like he'd discarded multiple variations before settling on that one, but he'd also sounded like he meant it, so she'd accepted the apology.

"I thought you had to be exaggerating about how bad the proposal was."

"Mr. Darcy ain't got nothing on Bran Cornick," Dan agreed. "He also accidentally started Leah's Feminist Werewolf Revolution," he told Jane. Leah could hear the capital letters, the same way she always could when someone said it. They made her smile. "Or so I've heard. I wasn't here then, I just inherited a pack with a woman ranked fourth and got told it was all Bran Cornick's fault."

"Well, thank God for that," Jane, as one of the pack members reaping the benefits of Leah's Feminist Werewolf Revolution, said, her voice heartfelt. Not many packs organized themselves like the Rio Grande Pack of El Paso, even these days, but there were a few, and for some reason that always seemed mysterious to the men, they tended to have a better gender ratio, tended to run a little smoother. And it all went back to that terrible marriage proposal and Leah's mile-wide stubborn streak.

Leah smiled, showing a lot of teeth. "He told me if I married him I'd be the most powerful female werewolf in North America. And I told him I didn't need him for that, thank you very much. Of course, I was too new to know that wasn't usually how it worked, and he got me mad enough not to care. And the rest is history." She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at her magazine, then looked up at Dan. Now that they'd finished cleaning up Alex's mess, she was, technically, second in the pack. "You don't think he'll demote me, do you?"

"Charles?" Jane asked. "I don't think Charles can do that."

"He can't," Dan told her. "Officially, the Marrok can't, either. His line is that he doesn't interfere with the inner workings of a pack, as long as everything is running smoothly. So he can't order us to rank our women the old-fashioned way, but he can't order everyone else to join at least the twentieth century already, either." Things were shifting, especially the last few years since the werewolves had come out. Columbia Basin had been the biggest deal, with their Alpha being right below the Cornicks in the overall chain of command, but it hadn't really been a surprise—they'd already been doing all sorts of other newfangled things, like whatever was going on with their Alpha's coyote shifter mate. "What he _can_ do," Dan continued, "is move someone he's certain ranks Leah to El Paso on whatever pretext."

"Which won't be that guy's fault," Jose added. "So we'll all be nice to him if it happens."

Leah snorted indelicately. "Speak for yourself."

"Leah," Dan said quellingly, but he didn't tell her not to be a bitch. He probably knew by now that was futile.

Jane was still confused, though. "So...why would he do it?"

"The Alphas' convocation," Leah told her. "It's got a nice big No Girls Allowed sign on it. Seconds come to the convocation, so they'd have to let a girl in. Some of the Alphas who rank their women the traditional way might cause difficulties."

"Eh," Dan said. "They can go screw. Several Alphas bring their thirds with them; if the Marrok ships in someone to be second I'll just become one of them, just for spite." Leah might be rubbing off on him, she thought. "Hell, I might call up Columbia Basin and tell Hauptman he should bring his, too. Throw another wild card in there."

"I still think we should have offered him a place, last time he was through here," Leah said, because she could never quite resist continuing this argument even though she'd long since lost. Maybe especially because she'd long since lost.

"That was twenty years ago," Dan reminded her. "The pack wasn't ready for it yet."

Leah sniffed, dismissive. "They weren't ready for me, either. They got ready."

"He would have ranked Alex. It would've been a giant mess right off the bat."

"There is that," she allowed.

"I'm not proud of it but it is what it is. _Anyway_ ," Dan said. "Charles Cornick is coming. And he's going to be judging us. So let's get our house in order."

Leah supposed this meant she had to put down her magazine. Ah, well. Shoes could wait. Pack came first.


End file.
